The Kelong Trikora Resort

We love Kelong Trikora! It's an amazing place, my husband (Indian Singaporean) and I (German) spent 4 days there over Chinese New Year. The team there, especially Linda and Eric, set a new standard to customer service! They are so deeply caring for each guest, it's touching. When it rained they placed an umbrella outside of every villa, so that guest wouldn't get wet on their way to dinner, when we wanted to go on a trip and the hotel driver was unavailable Linda called several taxi companies and in the end offered to drive us with the staff car, even when the fan did not immediately work three people showed up and got it fixed within 10mins. Kelong Trikora is a very quiet resort with a beautiful pool and 10 separate huts. The cuisine is out of this world, even though the menu is a bit limited (focus on Indonesian and Chinese), so many of the dishes were simply the best (can recommend the fish curry, the sotong bakar, the kailan and kangkong and as daily special chicken satay, each main about 180K, veggies 75-90K). It takes about an hour from the ferry terminal Bandar Bintan Telani (Lagoi) and from the resort we went to the blue lakes and sand dunes (1hr drive, absolutely worth it!). We tried the restaurants in the two resorts next to this and got utterly disappointed, food was horrible and the service even worse, so we would next time just stick to the resort kitchen. All the staff is very nice and chitchatty if you're open to it, but not forcing conversations upon anybody. For my husband's birthday I asked them to please help me get a chocolate cake and they got a super cute beautiful cake for me. The only thing to keep in mind is that you're dependant on the hotel's transport (so plan a bit in advance and let them know) and that during low tide the water draws back about 1km, so not really for swimming in the sea, but the pool is amazing and the whole area is covered in nice fluffy green grass, so nice to walk around barefoot.